Roki Sasaki's perfect game back on April 10th was commemorated by THREE separate Epoch One cards. Card #108 was for the perfect game, card #109 was for the 13 consecutive strikeouts and card #110 was for the 19 total strikeouts he had in the game.
If you're not familiar with Epoch One cards, they're essentially the NPB equivalent of Topps Now cards. The cards can be ordered at Epoch's web site and the print run for each card is limited to the number of orders received. There are some major differences between the Epoch One and Topps Now cards - the Topps Now cards are $9.99 each and are only on sale for 24 hours while the Epoch One cards are less than half the price (500 yen) and are available for three days. Epoch's not quite as timely at posting the cards though (for example cards for games between April 28th and May 1st didn't go on sale until May 6th) and Epoch doesn't have all 12 teams under contract - only the Marines, Dragons, Hawks, Tigers, Fighters, Lions, Eagles, Swallows and Giants.
Epoch doesn't publish the number of cards they print of each Epoch One card anywhere except on the back of the cards so I usually have to wait until I have whichever cards I've asked Ryan to pick up for me to see what the print runs are. Other print runs I've discovered by searching Yahoo! Japan Auctions. The highest print run I'm aware of was for the card for Kotaro Kiyomiya's first career home run in 2018 - there were 2,309 copies of that card made.
Today, though, I discovered that someone is selling all three Sasaki Epoch One cards on Ebay and I was able to see what the print runs were. We not only have a new record holder, we have a new top three. Card #108, the one for the perfect game, had a print run of 7258! Card #109 for the 13 consecutive strikeouts had a print run of 5458 and card #110 for the 19 strikeouts had a print run of 5050. I've swiped the images from the auction so you can see the fronts and backs of all three cards:
2 comments:
These are awesome! I'd love to add them to my collection, but the price is a little steep on the secondary market.
I saw someone else yesterday selling all three cards for $50 so they can be gotten for a little cheaper. To be honest, I think it's unlikely they're going to sky rocket in price simply because there's so many of them.
Luckily for me I had Ryan buy them for me when they came out so I got them for the 500 yen each.
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